Iranian control and PGSA claimed management zone approximate per open-source reporting as of 22 May 2026. UAE and Oman fills indicative per public reporting. Map: Strategy Battles / OSINT. Datum WGS84, UTM Zone 40R. ©StrategyBattles.net 2026

On 22 May, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy announced that 35 vessels, including oil tankers and container ships, had transited the Strait of Hormuz in the previous 24 hours "after obtaining permission, with the coordination and security protection" of the IRGC Navy. The day before, the number had been 31. The day before that, 26. The trend line is upward, and Iran is making sure the world knows it. These daily announcements are not a shipping bulletin. They are a political signal: the PGSA is open for business, the fee system is operating, and the transit route is under Iranian management.

The Persian Gulf Strait Authority formalised its existence in May 2026, launching an official account on 18 May and publishing a jurisdiction map on 21 to 22 May that placed its claimed management zone across waters touching both Omani and UAE sovereign territory. The vetting process requires operators to submit a 40-question form covering ownership, cargo, crew nationalities, and insurance before a permit is issued. No official tariff exists. Reports from Bloomberg and Reuters indicate that payment requests have reached up to $2 million per transit in some cases, with most vessels paying around $150,000. Payment is reportedly made in Chinese yuan.

ISW-CTP's framing of this as a protection racket is analytically precise. A protection racket is a coercive scheme in which an actor creates or threatens danger and then demands payment in exchange for protection from that danger. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping when the war began on 28 February. It has since attacked vessels, threatened to set fire to any ship that transited without authorisation, and has the naval assets to enforce those threats. The "security" the PGSA now offers is protection from Iranian forces. No other actor has threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz since February. The "service" being sold is the temporary suspension of Iranian coercion.

The legal distinction Iran is attempting to draw is between a toll, which is prohibited under the UNCLOS transit passage principle for international straits, and a fee for actual services rendered, which can be permitted under certain circumstances. Iran signed but never ratified UNCLOS, so its treaty obligations on this point are limited. But the IMO's secretary general stated on 9 April that there is no international agreement under which tolls can be introduced for transiting international straits and called any such system a dangerous precedent. The IMO Legal Committee adopted a resolution at its 113th session condemning Iran's closure and attacks on vessels. Five GCC states, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, filed a joint letter to the IMO on or around 22 May warning commercial operators against complying with PGSA routing directives.

The New York Times reported on 21 May, confirmed by Business Standard and other outlets, that Iran and Oman have been in discussions about a revenue-sharing arrangement for the PGSA fee system. Oman's inclusion is not an afterthought. The Strait of Hormuz is roughly 34 kilometres wide at its narrowest point, with the shipping lanes running through both Iranian and Omani territorial waters. Any bilateral framework that includes Oman transforms Iran's unilateral action into something that at least superficially resembles a shared maritime management regime.

Oman initially declined. Its concern was the friction with international partners, particularly the United States, that open participation would generate. That calculus shifted when Omani officials began to calculate the projected revenue from a fee system processing dozens of vessels per week. The NYT reported that Oman is now signalling willingness to use its influence with Gulf neighbours and with Washington to push the proposed system. Rubio responded directly, telling reporters that Iran was trying to convince Oman to join a tolling system in an international waterway and that it "can't happen."

The UAE's absence from the Oman discussion is telling in a different way. The PGSA's 22 May jurisdiction map places the claimed management zone boundary at two points on UAE sovereign territory, south of Fujairah on the eastern boundary and Umm al-Quwain on the western side. Oman's participation would legitimise a system that simultaneously infringes UAE sovereignty. Abu Dhabi has been among the most direct voices against Iranian control of the strait, with the head of the UAE's main oil company stating in late May that accepting Iranian control over the waterway would finish freedom of navigation as currently understood.

Speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Helsingborg, Sweden, on 22 May, Rubio characterised the state of US-Iran talks as showing "slight progress" while stressing he did not want to overstate momentum. An unspecified senior Iranian source told Reuters on the same day that both sides had narrowed gaps between their demands. A Pakistani diplomatic source told Saudi media outlet Al Hadath that the main obstacle remained how to handle Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile, and that closing those gaps would not be easy because both sides maintained "high demands."

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei offered a substantially different picture. He was quoted by IRNA as saying diplomacy takes time and that the sides had not reached a point where an agreement was close. He added that nuclear issues were not being discussed at all. If that is accurate, it places the "progress" Rubio cited on procedural or secondary matters while the two headline sticking points, HEU disposition and Hormuz control, remain untouched. The semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency reported that the latest US proposal had narrowed gaps "to some extent" but that further movement required Washington to end what it called the "temptation for war."

Pakistan's military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, arrived in Tehran on 22 May to press mediation efforts. Qatar sent a separate negotiating team working in coordination with the United States. Both moves signal that the diplomatic architecture around the talks is expanding, which can reflect genuine momentum or can reflect that direct channels remain blocked and third-party facilitation is filling the gap. Iran's current framework reportedly repeats terms Trump previously rejected, including demands for control of the Strait of Hormuz, compensation for war damage, lifting of sanctions, and the release of frozen assets.

Rubio warned again on 22 May that if a deal cannot be reached, Trump has "other options," without elaborating. Trump has been threatening for weeks that the 8 April ceasefire could end if Iran fails to make a deal. The ceasefire has not collapsed, but it has not produced a framework. With 35 IRGC-supervised transits on 22 May and a jurisdiction map now formally claiming UAE waters, Iran is not sitting idle while negotiations run. It is using the talks to buy time to institutionalise its position at Hormuz.

Hussein al Saidi, deputy head of the executive council of Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, rejected militia disarmament on 22 May, describing the plan as a "purely American project" and warning that Iraqi officials who insist on integrating the Popular Mobilisation Forces into the Iraqi security establishment will "pay the price" politically. Saidi's statement came in response to reports that an Iraqi committee comprising Badr Organisation head Hadi al Ameri, Prime Minister-designate Ali al Zaidi, and caretaker Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani is close to finalising an executive plan to disarm the militias, confiscating medium and heavy weapons and restructuring the PMF.

Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba's leader, Akram al Kaabi, had already declared disarmament a "red line" on 6 May, one day after the US State Department's Rewards for Justice Program offered a $10 million bounty for his whereabouts. Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada also reportedly reject the plan. These are not peripheral factions. ISW-CTP assess that Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, Kataib Hezbollah, and related groups are more subordinate to Iran than other Iraqi militias and have been the most kinetically active during the war, conducting drone attacks against US installations and Gulf state targets.

The Iraqi Shia Coordination Framework separately announced on 22 May that a federal government committee will be formed to investigate recent drone attacks targeting Saudi Arabia and the UAE, including the 17 to 19 May strikes that hit the Barakah nuclear power plant. The committee structure, with one team reviewing evidence in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and another investigating inside Iraq, is a constructive mechanism. But mechanisms of this kind have been proposed before in Iraq and have produced limited results when the actors under investigation are also embedded in the state security architecture through the PMF.

Iran's separate pressure on its Iraqi partners to reduce kinetic activity, reportedly communicated by IRGC Quds Force Commander Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani during April meetings in Baghdad, adds a complicating layer. Tehran appears to want its Iraqi allies to stop generating US financial pressure on Baghdad, which hits Iran's own sanctions-evasion mechanisms via the Iraqi economy. But it does not appear to want those allies disarmed. The distinction between pausing kinetic operations and surrendering weapons is the space in which Ghaani's "alternative plan" is reportedly being designed.

ISW-CTP's central assessment in the 22 May special report is that Iran is not positioning itself to merely exit the war. It is positioning itself to emerge from the war in a stronger strategic position, with effective veto power over access to the Strait of Hormuz. That assessment is supported by the evidence. The PGSA was established, its jurisdiction map published, its fee system operationalised, and its Oman partnership discussions opened, all while ceasefire negotiations were running. These are not defensive moves by an Iran trying to survive. They are offensive consolidation moves by an Iran trying to lock in gains before a deal is reached.

The US and its allies face a sequencing problem. A ceasefire that leaves the PGSA in place, even temporarily, risks allowing the system to accumulate precedent. Once 35 vessels per day are transiting under IRGC supervision with fees paid, the system generates institutional momentum: operators adapt their procedures, insurers build PGSA compliance into their frameworks, and the fees begin to appear as a cost of doing business rather than as coercion. Rubio's explicit rejection of any tolling system and his call for all countries to oppose the PGSA are the right signals. Whether they translate into enforcement is the open question.

The US position, per Rubio on 22 May, is that any outcome in which Iran continues to control the strait is "unfeasible" as a durable end to the war. That is correct as a strategic statement. It is also a high bar. Forcing Iran to genuinely relinquish the PGSA and return to pre-war transit conditions requires either a negotiated concession Tehran has consistently indicated it will not make, or a military option that carries its own risks and costs. The "other options" Rubio referenced remain on the table for now. Whether they stay there depends on whether the slight progress he cited becomes something more substantial at the next round of talks.